


just let me cry a little bit longer

by plumcat



Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: Discussion of Death, Nightmares, Rampant historical inaccuracy, Trauma, i am aware this fandom is dead but so am i fuck you, look i never thought i'd be writing fanfic about classic literature but here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 02:48:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16823605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumcat/pseuds/plumcat
Summary: there was an article about us in the newspaper today. “NOT THE CORAL ISLAND, SAY RESCUED BOYS” is the headline, and underneath: “officers horrified by of children's accounts of—”that's all I got to see. mum won’t let me read it. i checked the bin already, and her dressing table, and couldn’t find it. i wonder if anyone told. i wonder if they would’ve said what really happened or not or tried to pretend it was something else. If i could get the words out of my head, i'd tell them everything. i wouldn’t pretend at all. i’d show them how horrid people can really be.sucks to the coral island. i never liked that book anyway.—(or: ralph comes home. the island comes with him.)





	just let me cry a little bit longer

**Author's Note:**

> this was not edited. if you see a typo feel free to roast me. i'm not sure if there is anyone at all left in this fandom, but fuck it, i do what i want.

_July 14th, 1952_

The Naval ship dropped us back off in England today.

Mum was waiting at the dock in her blue dress and apron, and she held her skirts up to sprint down to the platform and didn’t even seem to notice that her leather boots were getting all wet. She cried when she saw me and I forgot to be embarrassed because I was crying too. She looks just the same as I remember, except her hair is shorter, her face is more tired, somehow, and she’s changed her perfume so when I buried my face into her neck the smell of her shoulder was different.

Daddy is off fighting in the war, Mum says, but she’s sure he is happy that I’ve gotten back alright. I wanted to ask the officers if they know him, but Mum said we shouldn’t be a bother. She made me point out which one had found us, though, and told him thanks and hugged him for a solid minute. I stood there and watched, because I didn’t know what else to do, and all around there were mums and daddies and people running to hug and kiss their kids, boots rattling on wooden planks and yelling and crying, and all the faces sort of blended together so I couldn’t tell who anyone was. It’s probably better that way.

All the way home, on the train, Mum kept turning and grabbing my face (a bit too tightly), as if to check i was real, and then fiercely kissing the top of my head. It made me feel small and strange, but I didn’t mind it, really. It felt different from recently, and all I want is for things to be different from recently.

Now, we are back at our house in the city. I can hear Mum moving around downstairs. I think she’s cooking. My room looks so odd. It’s clear Mum hasn’t messed with it at all, which is almost weirder. It’s as if I never even left. I am glad to be home. I don’t like being around the other boys. Cleaned up like we’ve all been, they barely look like they did when… everything was happening. I keep almost forgetting that they’ve still got the same self in them, the self that did all that. I realized I’ve thought of them each as two separate boys, the ones from the Before and the ones from the During. I don’t know what the After will mean for them— or me— and I’m not sure I can stand to find out.

_July 17th, 1952_

It is currently half past midnight. I’ve turned on the lights in my room because in the light, I am safe, and in the dark anything can be. The problem is, I can’t sleep with the lights on, so I’ve just been lying there, staring at the cracks on the ceiling until my vision goes blurry.

I fear I may be going crazy. I am far away from the island and yet I see it every time I close my eyes. Tonight I dreamed that I was back there, running down the beach. There was no one else there, it was just me. Me and the sand and the blinding blue sky and then all of a sudden, something flipped, and I wasn’t running for myself, I was running from something.

I couldn’t look behind me (or maybe I just didn’t want to try) but I knew they were all there. I could hear their footsteps and their voices, the thumps of many feet on sand. They were yelling and calling and making that dreadful signal noise with their mouths, and there was screaming, so much screaming, that I couldn’t even think. They were all screaming and screaming and I knew somehow that if I stopped running something awful would happen. I couldn’t think what but I knew it would be horrible, and then I fell and tasted sand and everything was gold and grey and red, red, red and the entire sky was screaming.

And then I woke up with the screaming still ringing in my ears and moments later, Mum burst into my room in her nightdress, wild-eyed, hair up in curlers. Then I noticed I wasn’t breathing so I sucked in a breath and the room went silent and I realised that the screaming was coming from me.

This is the third night in a row that this has happened.

_July 18th, 1952_

I think Mum might be afraid of me.

_July 19th, 1952_

I think I might be afraid of myself.

_July 21st, 1952_

It’s nine o’clock in the night. Mum just went back to her room. She made me a cup of tea and tucked me back in and and read me a story from the big red book of tales, the one with the worn-out cover and the pages creased from years of being turned. I know I’m too old for all that, but right now I scarcely mind. It’s nice to feel like I’m five again, back when Mum could make all the bad things go away just by being there. It was nice to lie there and hear about Jack and his beanstalk. It was nice to pretend that monsters can be defeated by small people so long as they’re brave.

The war is still going, and that worries her, I think. Every morning she reads the newspaper and shakes her head and sighs, and her forehead folds up like an origami crane. Mum wrote to Daddy right after I got home. She wouldn’t let me read the letter she wrote, but made me write to him too. I couldn’t think of much to say, but I told him about how I got to ride on a Naval ship and that I miss him and he should write back soon, please.

And here is the big thing.

Mum wants to send me to school. I do not want to go to school. Especially not to that boarding school out in Sussex. The campus is big and built of stone and polished wood. All the boys in the pictures are smiling. George from next door is going their now, she says. The countryside is safer, she says. Apparently she’s researched it, which feels like a betrayal.

We had a shouting match about it this morning. I still haven’t fully explained to her what happened on the island. She wants me to, I know— She keeps saying that she can’t help if she doesn’t know what’s hurting, but I can’t bear to talk about it. I want to believe that it didn’t even happen. I want to pretend it’s summer holidays like normal and there’s no war and no fear and no nightmares and no memories. I told her that and she went all silent. She hasn’t brought up school since then, but I can tell she hasn’t let go of it for good.

I think the tea and the book of stories was her way of apologising. I feel like I need to apologise too, but I’m not sure what for or how. Dear Mum, I’m sorry for being messed up. Dear Mum, I’m sorry I don’t work right sometimes. Dear Mum, I’m sorry for disappearing. Dear Mum, I’m sorry I can’t tell you why. Dear Mum, I’m sorry I’m broken.

What do you say to something like that?

_July 22nd, 1952_

I’ll tell her all of it someday. I will. I swear it. Just not this moment. Maybe I’ll write it out, in a letter, or give her this notebook. I don’t think I can stand to watch her face.

Or maybe I’ll just wait for it all to disappear.

_July 23rd, 1952_

There was an article about us in the newspaper today. “NOT THE CORAL ISLAND, SAY RESCUED BOYS” is the headline, and underneath: “Officers Horrified by Tales of Children’s Accounts of—”

That’s all I got to see. Mum won’t let me read it. I checked the bin already, and her dressing table, and couldn’t find it. I wonder if anyone told. I wonder if they would’ve said what really happened or not or tried to pretend it was something else. If I could get the words out of my head, I’d tell them everything. I wouldn’t pretend at all. I’d show them how horrid people can really be.

Sucks to the Coral Island. I never liked that book anyway.

_July 25th, 1952_

I can’t sleep again. I keep thinking about Simon and Piggy. I keep remembering what death smells like, what it looks like in the dim light of the moon, engraved into the crevices of rocks and smeared across leering faces. Then the reflections of the streetlights off the window looks like the glare in a pair of broken glasses and I can’t breathe and I can’t think and I feel like my entire self is being crushed under someone’s hand and—

I’m scared. It’s so dark outside. My breath is coming very fast, suddenly, and I don’t know what do do. I want to yell for Mum but I don’t want to bother her and also my voice is gone. I feel like I’m five and also very old. I wonder if Daddy has ever seen someone die. I wonder if Daddy’s ever killed anyone. Oh my god, oh god. Did I kill someone?

~~I can’t have I cafdsasc breathesd~~

Sorry for the splotches. I knocked my notebook off the table on accident and the text got messed up. This is very bothersome. i didn’t know tearstains made paper all crunchy. I’m alright now, though. Whatever that was, it went away, sort of. I’m not sure what happened but I didn’t like it at all. Please excuse my shaky penmanship.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. It hardly seems fair that I made it out and they didn’t. I’m not any better then them, really. I barely deserved to be the leader. I wasn’t smart like Piggy or nice like Simon or funny like Maurice or even brave like Jack. I was just the one who had the conch first, and that didn’t matter for long. Who decides those things? Who decides who deserves to live and who deserves to die? Jack sure thought he did. Mum would say it’s God. I’m starting to think that there’s no reason to any of it.

Maybe the crazy part was thinking that we’d all be alright.


End file.
